SACRAMENTO — State Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned that a spending cap that the Legislature qualified for the ballot will do untold harm to colleges and universities if approved by voters next year.

The cap, approved last year by the Legislature as part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last budget, is unusually restrictive and will force a significant downsizing of government, Lockyer said Wednesday in remarks to the Sacramento Press Club.

“I don’t see anything fundamentally objectionable” to the idea of spending caps, Lockyer said, “but you’ll have unintended mischievous consequences” with the ballot measure, ACA 4, which provides for a 3.8 percent rate of growth for government spending.

The problem, Lockyer said, is that one of the fastest areas of government growth, health care spending, grows as much as three times the rate of inflation. Because no one has been able to figure out how to curb health care costs, the Legislature would have to go after easier targets, such as universities and colleges — which withstood hundreds of millions in cuts this year alone.

“That’s a bad idea,” Lockyer said. “It’s bad for our future. It’s not the right cap. As a long-term investment strategy for the state of California to invest in those public sectors that create jobs, and create good jobs, it’s doing exactly what we shouldn’t be doing.”

Lockyer praised Democrats for knocking back the state’s structural deficit from $45 billion to $4 billion, calming Wall Street investors and giving the treasurer a stronger hand to borrow to pay off infrastructure bonds.

“That’s really remarkable work,” he said. “The majority party in the Legislature made a lot of difficult decisions. They didn’t get much help from their Republican colleagues. Finally Wall Street and investors are noticing the appropriately tough but good news with respect to managing our state’s finances.”

Still, just this week, state Controller John Chiang released figures showing that California collected $351 million less in May and June than Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature projected, a possible omen of lower revenues through the end of the year.

Lockyer would not predict whether the state will generate the $4 billion in projected revenues that was the keystone to the just-approved budget.

Noting that some economists have said it’s a reasonable forecast, Lockyer said, “I’m a little more skeptical personally. I won’t be surprised if the trigger gets pulled, but I’m not sure it’ll be the big trigger. It’s more likely it’ll be one of the smaller triggers. You’d have to just say at this point that the jury’s out.”

Lower revenues would trigger as much as $2.5 billion in further cuts to the budget, though smaller cuts could be triggered if revenues reach certain thresholds.

Lockyer also warned that every state and local government would feel “very substantial ripple effects” if Congress doesn’t raise the federal debt ceiling by Aug. 2.

“Hopefully they’re going to reach a reasonable accord that won’t cause federal defaults,” he said, “but every state and local government in the country, certainly including California, will have additional difficulties in financing its investments and in paying its bills if the federal default occurs.”

California is not among the 15 states whose finances are linked directly to the federal treasury rate. Those that are will have a “big jump in their rates because of a default,” but “eventually everyone on the food chain gets impacted, so it would increase our borrowing costs,” Lockyer later told reporters.

One of the mythical slogans bandied around the Capitol, Lockyer said, was the claim, made by Republicans and business interests, that California doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.

Compared to Gov. Ronald Reagan’s last budget, when general funding was $6.02 per $100 of income, Brown’s recently passed budget is $5.20 per $100 income, Lockyer said.

“You would have to have a very substantial tax increase for current state spending to be the equivalent to what Ronald Reagan was spending then,” he said.

Lockyer also said he was unsure if it is wise to pursue a personal income tax hike on the wealthy, as a number of labor groups are considering, saying it might drive job providers out of the state.

Though the wealthy doubled their take of the state’s income between 1996 and 2009, they still pay about half of all income taxes, he said.

“The question is what are the consequences of increasing that burden,” Lockyer said. “I am worried. I think we’re very near the ceiling on the personal income tax and we ought to be very careful about potential consequences for job creator impact.”

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.